Darkness Falls
by aranel-elf
Summary: Sirius angst. Trapped in Azkaban after being framed for a murder, what does Sirius see and feel when the dementors pass? R/R!!


Darkness Falls

Its cold.  So cold.  It gnaws and bites at my flesh, making the raging storm and thundering waves outside seem friendly and hospitable.  The freezing temperatures chill me to my bones, but this pain is nothing, nothing when compared to the gut-wrenching misery that I feel when they pass.  They glide, clammy hands outstretched, hoods drawn up.  They glide, and I often wonder if they were once human.  They glide, but then they stop.

They stop; outside my cell.  They don't need to touch you to plunge sharp icicles of terror and despair into your heart.  All they need to do is stop.  I once though that the coldness was the worst, that surely they would move on soon and I could gain the little comfort in them no longer casting their attentions upon me.  But I was wrong.  They stay and the cold is by no means the worst.

They stay and the chill penetrates the very essence of my being, and I can almost feel the loss of part of me: the loss of all my happy memories…they disappear, and I know that I will never be able to find them again, ever. But this feeling moves by as quickly as it was first introduced, and my mental torture begins.

I can see my father, the famous Auror, being struck down in a flash of green light as he vainly tries to defend himself.  I can hear my mother's sobs at night, mourning his loss but never crying in front of me.  Always trying to be strong.  And I can feel my pain, my loss, my confusion.  I was too young then to grasp why anyone would want to hurt such a good man as my father, but they did.  There are still some things that I cannot comprehend, even now.

Prongs, dear Prongs.  He holds the worst memories of my life.

The dementors force me to relive that day over and over.  The day I lost my best friend, the first girl I had ever kissed and my faith.  You see, I have always believed that everything happens for a reason, in fate and destiny.  That October I could not fathom the plan of the Almighty, if he or she even had one.

I can feel the nagging doubts hanging over my head, the very same fears that I had on the morning of Halloween.  I had wanted to talk to Peter, check he was all right.  However I had thought that the quick switch from me to him was foolproof, watertight.  Lily and James's lives had been in my hands, and my 'perfect' plan had killed them.

Another emotion assails me, more potent than the last as my body unconsciously curls up on the stone floor: guilt.  If I had never persuaded James to change secret-keeper, if I had never made friends with that traitorous filth…if, if, if.  A fresh onset of betrayal and forced memories that I wish that I had never obtained gripped my heart in an iron fist. 

That day I had dumped my bike recklessly in the previously neat driveway, running desperately to the desecrated building that was once Godric's Hollow. Clawing at the bricks and rubble I sought frantically a way for me to find my friends and godson with whom I had been chatting to carefree just a few days ago.  

I could even smell the terror, the fear, and the potent acrid stench that I smelt the day my father died. Avada Kevadra. 

My fingers were torn and bleeding, nails ripped from their beds.  And then I saw it.  An opening with a hand sticking through.  I tunnelled furiously, the worst moment of my life fast approaching.  The hand belonged to James.

I crawled to him, finding his eyes closed and his body bleeding from the fallen rubble.  I shook him violently, begging him to awaken, to open his eyes and make some wise crack that I could laugh at – a technique he often used when I was worried or scared. But he didn't move.  Gently I traced my fingers along his forehead, down to under his left eye where he had a small scar from a punch-up with Lucius Malfoy. I let my fingers linger here, and then reluctantly pulled them down to his neck where his pulse should have been.

And wasn't.

Pain surged through every part of my body, engulfing me in a tide of misery that was pushing me ever closer to the familiar deep black pit of depression that just kept spiralling downwards.  I knew that the dementors were enjoying this.  Oh yes, they didn't often get people like me in this place – young and innocent but with so many invisible wounds that would never truly heal.  They usually brought in death eaters, traitors and murderers.  But I was none of these.

Was I?

Oh God James, forgive me.

A/N: My first HP fic!! I cannot believe I've written one!! Please, please, please review and let me know what you think!!


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